SampleTank 4 CPU Optimization?

[Ryan_IK]

Please anyone with issues with crashing or performance, please contact support for the best help. They will be able to help optimize your settings best for your machine. Once a ticket is open you can send me your ticket number in a PM and I can make sure you are taken care of.

To Contact Support Click Here.

As was noted in an earlier post, the ST4 application & plugin appears to run in a single CPU thread, so to get the most out of it, you would benefit from the fastest CPU clock you can get. More cores won't make it run any better if you can't access those extra cores. So for example a CPU with a 3.5GHz clock would run a single thread much better than a CPU with a 2.5GHz clock.

The only way that I can see getting access to those extra cores with ST4 would be to run multiple instances of the ST4 plug-in in separate instrument tracks within your host DAW, with a single instrument in each instance. If the DAW is setup correctly, it should allocate each track with an instance of ST4 to a different core.

While we do not support multi-core in stand-alone, as we did not find it to bring any advantages to SampleTank 4. Each DAW will handle performance differently. The SampleTank 4 plug-in should rely on the DAW for how it deals with performance.

[zzz00m]

Please anyone with issues with crashing or performance, please contact support for the best help. They will be able to help optimize your settings best for your machine. Once a ticket is open you can send me your ticket number in a PM and I can make sure you are taken care of.

To Contact Support Click Here.

As was noted in an earlier post, the ST4 application & plugin appears to run in a single CPU thread, so to get the most out of it, you would benefit from the fastest CPU clock you can get. More cores won't make it run any better if you can't access those extra cores. So for example a CPU with a 3.5GHz clock would run a single thread much better than a CPU with a 2.5GHz clock.

The only way that I can see getting access to those extra cores with ST4 would be to run multiple instances of the ST4 plug-in in separate instrument tracks within your host DAW, with a single instrument in each instance. If the DAW is setup correctly, it should allocate each track with an instance of ST4 to a different core.

While we do not support multi-core in stand-alone, as we did not find it to bring any advantages to SampleTank 4. Each DAW will handle performance differently. The SampleTank 4 plug-in should rely on the DAW for how it deals with performance.

For clarification, I was not suggesting multi-core support was needed, rather that single thread optimization is badly needed for the thread that is handling the load.

It has been clear with any DAW that I have tested with, that if you stack up instruments (multi-timbral) within a single instance of ST4, you can observe the load being handled by a single CPU thread in the Windows Task Manager.

A noticeable difference exists between performance of ST3 and ST4 in this regard. In ST3 this behavior rarely resulted in a thread overload, but when using ST4 instruments it is inevitable.

[Ryan_IK]

A noticeable difference exists between performance of ST3 and ST4 in this regard. In ST3 this behavior rarely resulted in a thread overload, but when using ST4 instruments it is inevitable.

While SampleTank 3 & SampleTank 4 are different programs and they will have different system requirements, our support team should be able to help you figure out what is going on in regards to your issues.

Reach out to the team here.

Important: Send me a PM with your ticket information once opened.

[MikeFloutier]

A noticeable difference exists between performance of ST3 and ST4 in this regard. In ST3 this behavior rarely resulted in a thread overload, but when using ST4 instruments it is inevitable.

While SampleTank 3 & SampleTank 4 are different programs and they will have different system requirements, our support team should be able to help you figure out what is going on in regards to your issues.

Reach out to the team here.

Important: Send me a PM with your ticket information once opened.

Hi Ryan,

I've come here as I just got ST4 and have the same problem, ie. popping and clicking and high cpu usage, presumably on one core/thread, as my - Mac mini (late 2012) i5 2.5Ghz 2 core - is reporting only 30-40% total cpu usage.

Have there been any developments?

As far as I can see, we need to either:

1. Run multiple instances of ST4,
2. Remove unused instruments,
3. Disable the effects rack,
4. Keep raising samples/latency
5. Revert to ST3.
6. any other ideas?

One question I have is, "how do you disable the effects rack?"

Another would be, what's the harm in going back to ST3 - probably not a question for Ryan

Any help would be appreciated as I'm liking what I hear on ST4 so far and have lots of streaming and recording projects ongoing that I want it for.

Many thanks and kind regards,

Mike

PS my DAW is Reaper @ 1024 samples currently - using an ancient m-audio USB audiophile btw as my interface as my big Tascam 16 in 4 out just blew a chip.

[MikeFloutier]

...just to add, I deleted one instrument to leave the big piano which would run passably at 256 samples.

I did notice that disabling the effects rack - by toggling the On/Off button got rid of what popping there was left.

Also, simply displaying the ST4's FX window caused the popping to return, and it left when I closed it, then being happy to play nicely enen with the effects rack re-enabled.

I guess the Number 7 option, to continue from my last post would be some way of forcing the computer/ST4 to use both my cores/ threads whatever. Any ideas how to do that please?

[Peter_IK]

I would suggest as Ryan did to others above to reach out directly to the IK Support team as it seems they would be best-equipped to answer these questions and resolve your issues. They can be reached at http://www.ikmultimedia.com/contact-support

[Fuatu76.]

I encountered the same issue last night, and unfortunately, it still hasn't been resolved.

Despite having 8 cores available, I'm disappointed to find that ST4 only utilizes a single core even when I'm using multiple instruments simultaneously. It's a shame that the developers have not implemented multithreading support, as it's causing inconvenience for users like myself for years.

Adding multiple instances of ST4 doesn't help either. It's high time that IK Multimedia provides a solution to this issue, as it's hindering the full potential of their product."

P.S: I also created a support request and will post if there are any improvements.

[Peter_IK]

If you are using it in a DAW, the multithreading would be managed by your DAW software. I'm sure IK Support will assist you with the issues you are having, though.

[Fuatu76.]

If you are using it in a DAW, the multithreading would be managed by your DAW software. I'm sure IK Support will assist you with the issues you are having, though.

Checking again and the number of threads I may be wrong assuming it is using single CPU.
I can see that both FL-studio and Sampeltank 4 is using multiple threads.

However I had to replace ST4 instruments with Kontakt7 instruments and after that the CPU issues and bad sounding issues resolved.

Let's see what the support tells.

Thanks

[darkogav]

I just had a look at on my system ST4 is using multiple threads both standalone and in DAW. Perhaps check your FL settings. IIRC, there was thing you need to route.

https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-le ... pp_opt.htm

[Fuatu76.]

I just had a look at on my system ST4 is using multiple threads both standalone and in DAW. Perhaps check your FL settings. IIRC, there was thing you need to route.

https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-le ... pp_opt.htm

Thanks darkogav
I am using MacOS, and I agree that ST4 is using multithreading and I already told it in my previous reply that my assumption was wrong.

Here are the instruments in ST4

I used 5 different channels and added ST4 in each one of them. And each ST4 had one instrument.

The CPU usage was going up to +300% and the sound quality was really bad because of that.

I removed ST4 and replaced all instruments with Kontakt 7 instruments. For example, I used also Grandeur (+5GBs) and Noire (+15GBs) which are huge sampled instruments.

With Kontakt 7 instruments the CPU usage went down to 70-90%.

So, I wonder if ST4 is doing a good usage of compute resources, or is there a setting that I need to optimize.

[zzz00m]

So, I wonder if ST4 is doing a good usage of compute resources, or is there a setting that I need to optimize.

ST4 is fairly resource heavy, and I doubt that it will run well on older systems. At least it never did on my old system as I loaded it up with more than one or two instruments.

I had to upgrade my PC hardware a few years ago before it would run well. ST4 is still a beast though, but at least it's stable now.

[darkogav]

I just had a look at on my system ST4 is using multiple threads both standalone and in DAW. Perhaps check your FL settings. IIRC, there was thing you need to route.

https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-le ... pp_opt.htm

Thanks darkogav
I am using MacOS, and I agree that ST4 is using multithreading and I already told it in my previous reply that my assumption was wrong.

Here are the instruments in ST4

I used 5 different channels and added ST4 in each one of them. And each ST4 had one instrument.

The CPU usage was going up to +300% and the sound quality was really bad because of that.

I removed ST4 and replaced all instruments with Kontakt 7 instruments. For example, I used also Grandeur (+5GBs) and Noire (+15GBs) which are huge sampled instruments.

With Kontakt 7 instruments the CPU usage went down to 70-90%.

So, I wonder if ST4 is doing a good usage of compute resources, or is there a setting that I need to optimize.

Are you usng FL on Mac OS X? What happens if you try it on Reaper trial? I wonder if its FL . It was always a Windows first DAW, wasn't it?

[Fuatu76.]

Hi all,

I yesterday got an update from IK support.
They suggested changing the streaming buffer sizes.
I maxed them and I have now much better results.


I think the main problem I have is that I am using an external SSD drive for my Sampletank samples as the size the samples are huge and I do not have enough disk capacity on my Mac. I have to use external SSD drive.

The buffering helped a lot and the issue is now happening only after 4-5 loops of playing the tracks.

Now I have much better results.